Category: History - Modern (1750+)
"If you will show me a system which gives absolute permanence, I will take it in preference to any other. But of all conceivable systems of currency, that system is assuredly the worst which gives you a standard steadily, continuously, indefinitely appreciating, and which, by...
"If you will show me a system which gives absolute permanence, I will take it in preference to any other. But of all conceivable systems of currency, that system is assuredly th...
2. Chapter 2Gold alone has varied in production in this century from $15,000,000 to $150,000,000 per year, or tenfold; but gold and silver combined have never varied more than sixfold. It i...
3. Chapter 3Well, the estimates vary greatly. Soetbeer places the amount at $1,407,000,000 by the close of 1860; but Tooke and Newmarche have put it about $100,000,000 less. In the same era...
4. Chapter 4In 1800-10 the annual production of gold was $12,069,000 and of silver almost exactly $39,000,000, or some 50 ounces to 1; yet the highest ratio was 16.08, and the lowest 15.26....
5. Chapter 5Years afterward, in writing as a philosopher rather than an advocate, he took more rational ground, and compared the action of France to that of a parachute which retarded the f...
6. Chapter 6In a former paper read in 1879 he had predicted the rise in the purchasing power of gold, and in his paper of 1888 he said: "If the test of prophecy be the effect, there was nev...
7. Chapter 7From India, say a few. Well, India has a deal of silver--$950,000,000, according to our Director of the Mint. But she has 296,000,000 people, so it is but $3.21 apiece. And the...
8. Chapter 8If the example of France and the Netherlands--two of the soundest and most conservative nations in the world--be similarly taken as an index to the probable use of silver, it ap...